Chris - hip hop is not a dance for rap. it can go with R&B and Pop as well... which is what we already hear in ice rinks...

I think Stephanie and Dai are exceptions to the rule, not a good depiction of what we will get with this idea for the SD... If I'm proven wrong then it will be a positive

Toni, OK, what does "Pop" mean to you? Barry Manilow? I like him...did you know his music is being played in parks in Australia to keep out unwanted tough kids at night?
I guess looking at the ISU examples I am not seeing Barry Manilow.....but you did say something very interesting....at US events during wait periods I keep hearing "Save a horse, ride a cowboy."
That's pretty sexy...is that Hip-hop?

Toni, OK, what does "Pop" mean to you? Barry Manilow? I like him...did you know his music is being played in parks in Australia to keep out unwanted tough kids at night?

Barry Manilow was pop in his era, Pop is short for "Popular Music". It's not rock, it's not country, it's not R&B or Rap, it's just stuff teens listen to I suppose. Actually I think he might qualify as Easy Listening in any era. I'm not a Fannilow.

I guess looking at the ISU examples I am not seeing Barry Manilow.....but you did say something very interesting....at US events during wait periods I keep hearing "Save a horse, ride a cowboy."
That's pretty sexy...is that Hip-hop?

No, Save a Horse, Ride A Cowboy is not Hip-Hop, it's a Country Song, however you can do a hip-hop routine to it (in their music video they had hip hop dancers). You're confusing a genre of dance (Hip Hop) with a genre of Music... while there is a "hip-hop" genre of music (a mix of R&B and Rap is the best way I can describe it...) but in this case I think we're talking dance style.

The only problem with hiphop as an ice dance is that it will work best during lifts, twizzles, and a not touching step sequence---which is the SD outside of the blues CD sequences. The close holds during transitions that you should have will be tricky to incorporate.

I think of hiphop as single dancers or same sex groups, so it doesn't spring to mind that a couple would be doing it.

Thanks Doris, I bow down to your ability to find interesting clips for us. I can hardly wait to see which junior teams actually use hip hop, and I'm trying to imagine the music cuts...hmm. It is potentially a sensational combination and feel much less anticipation when I think of blues and swing for juniors.

I agree with Doris about hip hop not being used in any touching dance sequences...
as a former dancer, the hardest thing about hip hop is hitting your movements on the specified beat, which means that on ice, you can't "glide" from movement to movement. It may be possible to use hip hop in a sbs step sequence, however that's take a lot of work b/c a lot of hip hop movement is about action/reaction and how the body moves in relation to a step into another. That's actually what make hip hop unique...no one does it the same way, which proves to be a problem when choreograph and want two ice dancers to look the same on the ice. Hip Hop in any-type of "close-hold" sequence (i.e. where they are moving across the ice together but doing difference movement) just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. There's too many changes of directions and movement in and out (with your whole body) that having ice dancers dance close together will cause accidents even if they are not really touching. I think the best example of hip hop on ice is by far Daisuke Takahashi's SP form 07-08, but just watching him during his step sequences and imagine another skater doing similar movements across the ice right next to him...there's just tooo many places where one dancers could hit another/skates will get tangled.
I like the idea of "updating" ice dance...but hip hop seems like a tall order for junior teams if they want to pursue it.

I find it sad that people will judge something before seeing it. Any style of music or dance has potential to be wonderful and beautiful, or even if it is ugly, but meant to be ugly, as long as it is felt and understood, that is what art is about. Of course some will fail at portraying something well, but for those that do it well, that is all that matters. I hate most modern architecture, but when it is well done, it can be breathtaking. To me figure skating is an art, not only a sport, and to be presented with more options to be creative can only be a positive thing, even with the sometimes awkward results.

If rock and blues can be adapted to ice dancing, why not hip hop? Rock and blues has far less of in terms of dance traditions and culture compared to hip hop. Hip hop has a vast and diverse vocabulary of dance and movement styles. A lot of which won't be applicable to figure skating, but some of which will be. A lot of the basic footwork in the toprock part of breakdancing could be translated to ice dancing footwork.

And yes, as far as I know, there's no big tradition of continued holds in hip hop dancing. But so what? That just gives skating choreographers room to make up their own. While it will require more imagination than it took to adapt the tango or the waltz to ice dancing, there's also no way to go wrong. Someone will come up with something that looks good, I hope, and it'll take off!

My only worry is that skating judges really aren't educated in properly judging hip hop. The memo that the ISU sent out to explain hip hop came with a bunch of youtube video links as examples of what hip hop dancing could look like, and I was pained to note that they were all from various iterations of So You Think You Can Dance. For various reasons, the hip hop done in the competitive numbers on those shows aren't particularly authentic, not remotely representative of the variety of hip hop dancing out there, far too brief, far too reliant on big, showy tricks and most of the dancers doing them aren't very good at the style. If this is all the primer the judges are getting on hip hop dancing then they are seriously missing out. The ISU should've started with the basics, like the toprock video I linked above. There are lots of simple but fundamental moves that would do a proper job of capturing hip hop dancing, but they won't be found in 30 second pop jazz numbers from a reality competition show.

The ISU has always lusted after SYTYCD and DWTS type popularity for the SD.

Speaking of Dancing with the Stars, an interesting "proof" that hip-hop doesn't lend itself to couples dancing is in this beautiful exhibition dance done on the show, in which the male dancers generally do hip-hop, while the female dancers do more modern dance style. When they dance together, the mix is intriguing, to say the least. This dance is to my mind a glorious metaphor for "opposites attract." (The fact that it's done to one of my favorite songs, "Stand by Me," is a plus.)

The ISU has always lusted after SYTYCD and DWTS type popularity for the SD.

Very much so. It's just plain lazy/silly to use SYTYCD competition clips to explain a newly added dance style. Imagine if tango was being added now, and instead of focusing on people who've been doing it for years, using videos where they patiently explain the basic nitty gritties of the style, the ISU memo includes only videos of Cloris Leachman doing the tango on a TV show! The ISU needs to remember they're in charge of an Olympic sport, where hard work, expertise and fundamentals should be emphasized. Perhaps they think that because hip hop dancing is such a visible part of popular culture, it's something superficial that anybody can affect without much study. But of course there's a lot more to it than that. And really, it's the many basic parts of hip hop that need to be studied and integrated into ice dancing if something truly new and exciting is to be created in the discipline.